7 Pennsylvania Church and Fire Hall Festival Foods Out-of-Staters Have Never Heard Of
A Methodist congregation outside Dover has run a stuffed-pig-stomach dinner as one of its steadiest fundraisers for years.
That’s stuffed pig stomach, simmered for hours, then sliced and served like nothing about it needs explaining.
These are the Pennsylvania church and fire hall festival foods that out-of-staters have never heard of.
1. Chicken Corn Soup With Rivels
Chicken corn soup shows up on nearly every fireman’s fair menu across central Pennsylvania, and it isn’t the soup outsiders picture when they hear “chicken and corn.”
The broth carries rivels, small hand-pinched bits of egg and flour dropped straight into the pot to thicken it.
Not noodles.
Not dumplings either.
Church cookbooks across Pennsylvania Dutch country treat the recipe like a family heirloom, and every cook argues their rivels are pinched smaller than the next parish’s.
Order a bowl at a fireman’s fair booth. The broth comes back kernel-heavy, nothing like the smooth corn chowder a state fair sells under a similar name.
2. Bot Boi
Bot boi carries the English name “chicken pot pie” on a lot of central Pennsylvania fundraiser flyers, and that name undersells the switch waiting underneath it.
There’s no crust.
Squares of boiled dough, cut thick and dropped into simmering chicken broth with potatoes, take the place of the baked pastry shell every other state expects.
Hand-in-Hand Fire Company runs its own annual pot pie dinner around the dish, and volunteer companies from Lancaster to Lebanon County stage the same fundraiser under nearly the same name every year.
A beef version sells at the same tables. Neither one resembles the flaky, baked pot pie an out-of-stater would order at a diner.
Bot boi dinners also help explain why so many Pennsylvania fire companies can afford to keep their trucks running at all.
How Fire Hall Dinners Fund Pennsylvania’s Trucks
Pennsylvania’s volunteer fire companies lean on pot pie dinners and carnivals for more of their budget than many people outside the state would guess.
Centre County’s Boalsburg Fire Company pulls close to 40% of its operating budget from fundraising alone.
Nearby Mountain Top Fire Company leans on fundraising for closer to 90%.
A fire engine that cost $350,000 fifteen years ago runs close to $1 million now, and municipal funding hasn’t kept pace with that jump.
3. Halupki
Halupki fills the folding tables at Pennsylvania’s Byzantine Catholic and Orthodox parish festivals, cabbage leaves rolled tight around ground meat and rice.
Saints Peter and Paul Byzantine Catholic Church in Bethlehem runs an annual halupki sale alongside its monthly pierogi production, and parishioners describe both as long-established parts of how the parish pays its bills.
Not a side dish.
Order it by the piece, and the church hands over what a member’s Rusyn or Slovak grandmother would have made for a Sunday table, not a festival novelty invented for visitors.
The name gives it away: Pennsylvania’s Rusyn and Slovak coal-region parishes call it halupki, a term that barely travels beyond that pocket of the state.
Polish-American communities elsewhere across the country know the same rolled cabbage as gołąbki instead.
Rarely halupki.
4. Fastnachts
Fastnachts land on tables across Pennsylvania Dutch country every year on Fastnacht Day, the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, and older East Penn Valley congregations still host a Fastnacht Church Social built around them.
They’re a potato doughnut, deep fried, cut into a square or a diamond instead of a ring.
No hole in the middle.
Farm families originally fried them to use up the lard and sugar in the house before Lent started, and a church social kept that same excuse alive long after many kitchens stopped keeping lard around.
Ask for a fastnacht anywhere outside the state. A bakery counter will hand over a regular doughnut and call it close enough.
5. Hog Maw
Hog maw is the stuffed pig stomach that Mount Royal United Methodist Church, near Dover, has built a standing monthly dinner around, held the third Saturday of the month from October through April, skipping December.
The stomach itself works as a natural casing, packed with potatoes, sausage, and cabbage, then baked for hours until the outside turns a deep golden brown.
Pennsylvania Dutch dialect calls it “Seimaage,” and the name traveled straight down from families who never let a butchered hog go to waste.
Nothing wasted.
The church’s dinners raise between $700 and $800 a sitting, money the congregation counts on every winter.
Many Pennsylvania Dutch families still treat it as a New Year’s dish, too, a rival to sauerkraut and pork rather than a replacement for it.
6. Ham Loaf
Ham loaf is a staple of Pennsylvania Dutch country that barely registers anywhere else in the country, a baked blend of ground ham and pork shaped into a loaf instead of patted into patties.
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Johnstown holds an annual ham loaf sale, with proceeds going straight to its Episcopal Church Women (ECW) ministries.
A two-pound loaf runs seventeen dollars, sold frozen with basting sauce and baking directions taped right to the box.
Some churches glaze it with pineapple and brown sugar before it goes in the oven.
Others keep it plain.
Either way, the ham carries the dish.
Psst! How much do you know about Pennsylvania’s food history? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
Pennsylvania Festival Food IQ
Answer these questions on Pennsylvania’s church suppers, fire hall carnivals, and food history. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Which two states have spent more than a decade arguing over who invented the whoopie pie?
7. Potato Filling
Potato filling replaces the turkey stuffing or dressing on many Pennsylvania Dutch Thanksgiving tables, a baked casserole of mashed potatoes folded through with cubed bread, celery, and onion.
Not stuffing.
Central Berks Fire Company in Centerport takes preorders every fall and sells finished trays for $4.50 a pound, timed for pickup just ahead of the holiday.
Zion Lutheran Church in Womelsdorf runs a sale of its own a few miles away, packaging its trays two pounds at a time.
Outside Pennsylvania, ask what belongs in "the filling" at Thanksgiving, and many people reach for turkey stuffing or cornbread dressing instead.
The mashed-potato-and-bread casserole that goes by that name in Pennsylvania barely exists anywhere else under it.
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Pennsylvania never wrote one statewide yard sale law, so every township wrote its own instead.
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